


With What Dissimulation

by charmquark



Series: Edgar Allan Poe challenge [1]
Category: Naruto.
Genre: Angst, F/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmquark/pseuds/charmquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi keeps information from his team, and a mission doesn't go at all as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With What Dissimulation

**Author's Note:**

> (Written 01/2011)
> 
> Written for [](http://kakasaku.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://kakasaku.livejournal.com/)**kakasaku** 's Poe contest, week 1 - "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Kakashi knew things would go wrong, Sakura was absolutely certain of it.

She realized something was _off_ the moment Kakashi switched the mission’s duties on her. Sakura and her fists were far better suited to breaking into a drug lab they had no qualms about destroying; indeed, had been commissioned to destroy. Equally better suited to snooping around a mansion for documents that would connect that lab with a daimyo’s son was Sai and his superior stealth training, yet it was Sakura that Kakashi chose to take with him for that part of the mission.

Yamato blinked, and Naruto looked a bit mulish, but Sakura had difficulty masking her shock. Hadn’t they agreed that there would be no deviations from the routine, nothing that would make anyone suspect anything was different between them?

Ultimately, she didn’t protest — why call undue attention to it? — nor did anyone else, and Sakura was left with her misgivings as she went up the mountain to the house with him while the rest of their team went another direction.

From then on, everything served to unnerve her further. The house was settled, empty. They didn’t run across a single servant. It was as easy as breathing for them to find their way into and out of the office, nothing disturbed but the file that would be discovered missing in the morning. They were quick, efficient, things were going without a hitch, and what would be an apparent boon to anyone else made Sakura’s skin crawl with the surety that something would leap out at them.

She was quite certain after two hours of the uneventful that things would get much stickier before the night was out. Still, it wasn’t until Kakashi seized her arms with his large hands unannounced and very nearly threw her into the wardrobe of an unused guest room, and moments later, like stowing her away had set off a trip wire, she could hear a shout and sounds of a struggle involving multiple enemies and feel a staggering flare of chakra that she realized that _he’d known all along._

The room, the whole house went quiet again. Sakura couldn’t see what was going on on the other side of the doors, but the very air halted and all was still, except for the loud thudding of blood counting out her heartbeat in Sakura’s ears as things began to fall into place with a click.

“Do you remember me, Sharingan Kakashi?” asked a voice — male, adult, rough like being dragged across a dirt road.

Damn it, Kakashi knew. Her face went cold as she paled.

“Hmm, not sure. Maybe you should take these off so I can see better.”

He _knew_ and he switched the protocol around so that he would know exactly where she was at all times, because he _knew this would happen_.

A snort. “I don’t think so. I think I ought to take that mask off instead.”

“Ah, I’d rather you didn’t.” Kakashi said it like he’d mention his dislike of a certain food. “I have fish lips, you see. Really embarrassing.”

Sakura wanted to laugh at his stupidity, or sob because the ache in her chest was like missing Sasuke except exponentially worse, or scream because she was angrier with him than she’d ever been in her life.

She kept perfectly quiet and still instead.

_Rule twenty-five: a shinobi must show no emotions._

She wanted to rush out there with fists alight with chakra, wanted to break whomever was within arms reach and then move through the room _breaking,_ but that was something Naruto would do, and Sakura was not Naruto. Naruto was all passion and no sense, and Sakura had her passion but her pragmatic mind was powerful too, and she counted at least fifteen chakra sources out there. All shinobi. If Kakashi was incapacitated, she was certainly and perhaps lethally outnumbered.

“Where are your friends, Hatake?” a second voice asked.

_Rule twenty-five, rule twenty-five._ She repeated it like a mantra in her head, over and over, until it failed to sound like syllables that formed a word and was simply gibberish she had to keep repeating silently to prevent from going mad.

“I’m here alone.”

_Rule twenty-five rule twenty five rule twenty_

“He’s lying,” assessed the first. “Break his fingers.”

_five rule twenty five rule_

Simple, effective torture, a part of her brain that always sounded a bit like Tsunade supplied. There were a lot of nerve endings in the hand, and with ten opportunities available to cause pain there were ten opportunities to break the subject. Practical, too, because what good were a thousand jutsu if he couldn’t form hand seals?

She needed help, but it was over a mile away down in the valley. She needed a plan, but all the ones her frantic mind could churn up would be suicide and fruitless to boot. She was going to _kill_ Kakashi when all was said and done, but she couldn’t if he was already dead.

He made no noise after the first _crack_ , or the second. _Crack, crack_ similarly failed to produce a reaction, but on the fifth _crack_ it was Sakura who could no longer take it and cried out.

A deadly silence fell over the room.

“What was that?” a third, female voice.

A sixth _snap_ split the air, and Kakashi must have not been expecting it because he grunted with pain for the first time. “ _Who else is here, shinobi?_ ”

“Check in there.”

Whoever that first voice belonged to was clever, and she hated him for it. It was so much easier when people were stupid, but then even an idiot would think to check where she was hiding. She heard footsteps approaching and she froze for a fraction of a heartbeat, before her hands came to life on their own. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t planned. It had nothing to do with head or heart, just reflex and the instinctual urge to avoid death.

The genjutsu she crafted was so potent, so subtle, that the man who jerked open the doors stuck his face an inch from hers and stared through her as though she didn’t exist. To him, she didn’t exist. No one could see her.

No one, that is, except Kakashi, whose left eye was open and swirling almost lazily and looking straight at her. There were seals crawling up his arms and legs like elaborate, embroidered snakes that kept him kneeling on the floor as effectively as chains. His right hand was a mangled mess, misshapen and bruised from blood welling under the skin.

“Kakashi — " she murmured, knowing no one else would hear.

He jerked his head sharply to the side, a negation, an order. Sakura bit her lip to keep from whimpering. It was all she could do not to close her eyes to escape his torment and his love and his recrimination and how utterly, utterly useless she was, _again._


End file.
